Last year, Zynga surprisingly acquired German developer Gamedoctors, creator of successful indie iOS game ZombieSmash. The Gamedoctors team has now launched Zombie Swipeout – their first title under the Zynga brand, although it was already in development at the time of the acquisition in October 2011. Gamedoctors’ core team remained the same and still operates from Bielefeld, Germany.

“The great thing for us is that nothing big has changed, we continue working in pretty much the same way while having access to additional resources and getting a lot of support from Zynga’s other teams,” Gamedoctors’ founder and now Director Zynga Mobile Germany Matthias Hoechsmann tells us.

Zombie Swipeout, the ’spiritual successor’ to ZombieSmash, is an accessible free-to-play action title with only one game mode in which players attempt to slash (or slice, bludgeon, explode, clobber) as many floating zombies as possible while sparing Joey, the only surviving human character. Hitting a zombie’s head grants extra points; power-ups include grenades, slow mo, and liquid nitrogen and a full armory of sharp and blunt weapons from machetes and knight swords to baseball bats — all with different perks. The scoring system is woven into gameplay with slashable coins serving as the primary way to advance.

Using different weapons consumes different amounts of energy which is refilled with the game’s virtual currency Coins. Unusually, these Coins can be earned within the game, making it theoretically possible to extend play endlessly without paying. However, this would leave players with less funds to buy advanced weaponry – so a fair amount of strategic play is required to make it to the top.

A leaderboard is the core social element with weekly tournaments against Facebook friends or other players that can be added when knowing their personal game code. Zombie Swipeout is available now in Canada and will be soon rolled out worldwide for iPhone and iPod Touch. As with ZombieSmash, an Android version will follow.